Scales and Secrets (Rough Beta Version)

Chapter 7

Once we were out of the tank and dried off James joked about how Lauren was a dolphin whisperer because of how the dolphins refused to leave her side. We shared an uneasy glance, he didn't know how right he was.

Thankfully enough, a few hours later we had returned back to the condo, Mom had to return to the institute to help with the new catch. Though she refused to tell us what it was.

"So when do you think the rest of our powers will come in?" I asked as I flopped down on the couch in the living room.

"No clue." Nikki said and sat down in one of the shell chairs across from me.

"I'm more interested in what we should have for dinner." Lauren said as she crossed the room and disappeared into the kitchen.

"We just had lunch." Nikki said with a light eye roll.

Hannah and I chuckled as Lauren scoffed and opened the fridge.

"We could always just try to test them and see what happens." She said as she rummaged around the kitchen. "The powers I mean."

"I kinda like that idea." Hannah said and sat down on the couch with me. "We could just look up water related powers and test them until something works. Something in there has to be at least a little accurate."

I heard Lauren close the fridge and walk into the living room. She disappeared down the hall and came back with her laptop.

"We might as well get started."

We moved into the kitchen and sat down at the table, huddled around the laptop, scrolling through a Wikipage about water based superpowers. Needless to say, there were a lot, and by probability Lauren's theory was looking better and better.

"That's the last of it." I said and closed the laptop with a sigh. "Nikki could you read me the list of powers we wanted to try."

We had come up with a list of some thirty odd powers we thought were most believable. Nikki read them off and put the list down. "So who wants to go first?"

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After a few failed attempts at the first few things on the list we settled on "animal communication and manipulation" to see if the rest of us had the same power as Lauren. She couldn't quite explain how she was able to really communicate and tell the fish what to do, so we resorted to dumbly talking to a few goldfish we bought at a pet store a few blocks away, and failing miserably.

"Swim in a counter clockwise circle around the bowl." Lauren instructed the fish with a twirl of her finger, attempting to demonstrate again.

The fish gracefully spun around and began swimming in the other direction.

"See? Now you try." She said and pushed the bowl over to Nikki.

"Swim in a clockwise circle around the bowl." Nikki instructed.

The fish ignored her and continued to swim in a counter clockwise circle.

"Swim clockwise." She said again, a bit more forcefully.

They continued to ignore her, and swam around at random.

"Stupid fish." She mumbled and looked wistfully into the bowl.

"Easy!" Lauren said, sounding lightly offended. "They have feelings too."

"Here you try." Nikki said and slid the bowl towards Hannah.

The bowl wobbled from the force of the push and tipped over. In what felt like slow motion I saw the bowl begin to spill the water and fish out, on instinct I lunged forward to try and grab it. My outstretched hand tingled slightly, and the water froze in midair. The bowl rolled away and fell to the ground, shattering.